Jan 22, 2025
poetaster, n.
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This word enters English in the 1590s from French poetastre, which is comprised of the Latin root poeta, meaning poet, and the French suffix -aster, which is a diminutive, usually a pejorative, also derived from the Latin -aster, which was at first simply a nominalizing suffix that later gained a pejorative connotation.
The resulting word means essentially "a bad poet", and has largely fallen out of common usage.
Nota Bene: this word is pronounced "poet-aster", not "poe-taster".
